# Date: 1906

Societies of the seasons and the uprising of May 12, 1839; during the period of the 1848 revolution he stood on the far left flank of the democratic and proletarian movement in France, repeatedly sentenced to imprisonment.

15 See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 7, pp. 90—92.

10 Paul Déflotte — French naval officer, democrat and socialist, adherent of Blanqui, active participant in the events of May 15 and the June uprising of 1848 in Paris; deputy to the Legislative Assembly (1850-1851).

François Vidal — French economist, socialist, in 1848 — secretary of the Luxembourg Commission, deputy to the Legislative Assembly (1850—1851).

Lazare Hippolyte Carnot — French publicist and political figure, bourgeois republican; in 1848 — minister of education of the Provisional Government; deputy to the Constituent Assembly.

17 Louis Blanc — French petty bourgeois socialist, historian. He denied the irreconcilability of class contradictions under capitalism, was an opponent of proletarian revolution, stood on the position of compromise with the bourgeoisie. During the period of the 1848 revolution, having entered the Provisional Government and heading a commission for "study of the workers' question," through his compromising tactics he helped the bourgeoisie distract the workers from revolutionary struggle. Elected in February 1871 to the National Assembly, Blanc was among the opponents of the Paris Commune.

18 See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 7, pp. 92—93.

19 See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 7, p. 101.

See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 7, p. 102.

See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 8, p. 164.

22 Nicolas Anne Théodule Changarnier — French general and bourgeois political figure, monarchist; during the period of the Second Republic — deputy to the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies; after June 1848 — commander of the garrison and National Guard of Paris; participated in the dispersal of the demonstration of June 13, 1849 in Paris.

See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 8, p. 171.

See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 8, p. 193.

See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 8, p. 64.

26 See K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 8, pp. 417—418.

NOTES ON F. ENGELS'S BOOK
"ARTICLES 1871—1875" ST. PETERSBURG, 1906

[Not earlier than 1906]

[44—45] ...Our 33 men of action tell us that they are: 187 42 first, atheists, second, communists, third, revolutionaries. Our Blanquists have in common with the Bakuninists that they want to be representatives of the most extreme direction, want to go further than everyone else. That is precisely why, incidentally to note, they often employ the same means as the Bakuninists, although to achieve opposite ends. So it is necessary to be more radical than everyone else in the matter of atheism. At the present time, fortunately, it is no longer difficult to be an atheist. Among European workers' parties atheism appears inseparably linked with socialism, although in some countries it quite often resembles the atheism of that Spanish Bakuninist who said: to believe in god is contrary to every socialism, but to believe in the Virgin Mary — that is quite another matter, and naturally every decent socialist must believe in her. Regarding the vast majority of German workers' social-democrats one can even say that for them atheism is already a stage passed; this word, having a purely negative significance, is inapplicable to them, since they appear already not as theoretical, but only as practical opponents of religion: they have done with the idea of god, they live and think in a world of reality and are therefore materialists. The same will probably be true in France. And if not, then the simplest thing would be to take care that brilliant French materialist literature of the eighteenth century be distributed among the workers in enormous quantities — that literature which in both form and content represents to this day the greatest creation of French genius, which, by its content, taking into account the state of science at that time, even now still stands at an unattainable height, and by its form even now still has nothing equal to it. But our Blanquists care nothing for all this. To show that they are more radical than everyone, they, following the example of the revolutionaries of 1793, abolish god by decree: "Let the Commune forever free humanity from this phantom of the calamities of the past (i.e., god), from this cause (a nonexistent god — cause!) of all the calamities of the present. There is no place for a priest in the Commune; every religious manifestation, every religious organization must be forbidden." And this demand, for the transformation of people par ordre du mufti* into atheists, is signed by two members of the Commune who apparently had the opportunity to convince themselves fully, first, that on paper one can command very, very much, but this is still not sufficient for the command to be executed, and second, that persecutions are the best means of strengthening undesirable convictions! One thing is beyond doubt: the only service that can still be rendered to religion now is — to declare atheism a mandatory symbol of faith and, outdoing all Bismarckian church laws, forbid religion altogether3.

[48] German socialist workers, who demonstrated in 1870 that they are completely free of any national chauvinism, will nonetheless consider it a good sign that the French worker adopts correct theoretical principles, even though they come from Germany4.

[73] "...If Russia continues to proceed along the path upon which she entered in 1861, then she will lose the most favorable opportunity that history has ever presented to a people to avoid all the perversions of the capitalist system"5.

[77] Whether enough has survived of the Russian commune so that it could now, as Marx and I still hoped in 1882, become the point of departure for communist development upon the occurrence of a upheaval in Western Europe — I do not presume to judge. But this is beyond doubt: in order for anything at all to survive of this commune, it is necessary first of all to overthrow tsarist despotism, it is necessary to have a revolution in Russia6.

1 The notes were made by V. I. Lenin upon reading the book: Friedrich Engels. "Articles 1871—1875. Vogt. — Bakuninists at Work. — The Poles. — Blanquists. — On Russia." Trans. from the German by B. Smirnov under the editorship of A. Sanin. St. Petersburg, published by "Znanie," 1906, in the work "Émigrant Literature. II. The Program of the Blanquist Émigrés of the Commune" (see K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 18, pp. 510—517). This was the first publication of this work by Engels in the Russian language. V. I. Lenin used the passages he marked in his articles "Against the Boycott (From the Notes of an S.D. Publicist)" and "On the Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion" (see Complete Works, vol. 16, p. 9 and vol. 17, p. 416).

There are also Lenin's notes in this book and in F. Engels's afterword to the work "On the Social Question in Russia" (see K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 22, pp. 438—453).

2 In 1874 in the newspaper "Volksstaat" (No. 73 of June 26) F. Engels's article "Émigrant Literature. II. The Program of the Blanquist Émigrés of the Commune" was published.

3 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 18, pp. 513—514.

4 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 18, p. 517.

5 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 22, p. 449.

6 K. Marx and F. Engels. Works, 2nd ed., vol. 22, p. 449.

* — by the order of the mufti, by command from above.